Jeannette Pols (1966) is Socrates Professor at the department of Sociology
and Anthropology, Faculty of Behavioral & Social Sciences, at the University
of Amsterdam. The chair is established on behalf of the Socrates Foundation. The
name of the chair is ‘Social Theory, Humanism & Materialities’, or more
colloquially: empirical ethics in care. She works as associate professor at the
section of Medical Ethics, Department of General Practice at the Academic
Medical Centre in Amsterdam.

The mission of Pols’ chair is to build bridges between research in medical
ethics and medical anthropology. Her research and teaching develop the
ethnographic study of ethical questions. Technologies are central here. In
comparative ethnographic analyses, her research provides insight into the
practical and desirable ways in which these technologies shape care and
societies, and the repertoires of ‘being human’ that follow from these
practices. The aim is to discover and develop normative directions in complex
technological societies.

Pols research runs along three main axes. She studies:

how ethical and aesthetic values are embedded in care practices;

the ways in which technologies help to shape actual positions of patients
and caregivers, and how to evaluate these positions;

the practical knowledge of patients and carers.

Teaching

Jeannette Pols teaches ethnographic and empirical ethics research to
audiences trained or training in ethnographic research, science & technology
studies, theory of the social sciences, and empirical ethics. She teaches
empirical ethics and practical approaches to discuss ethical problems to medical
students and health care professionals.

Jeannette Pols studied Social Philosophy and Clinical Psychology in Groningen, when the quantitative turn in the social sciences was in full swing. Against these tides, she conducted her first ethnographic study in a nursing home for people with dementia, and published her first journal article about this research in the Dutch Monthly Journal for Mental Health Care (MGV) which was awarded with a honorable mention for being one of the best articles of the year’s issue.

Pols received her PhD from the University of Twente, for an award winning study in empirical ethics. The study ethnographically unravelled what ‘good care’ is by studying how nurses and patients shaped care ‘in action’. Not only did the ideals differ greatly between long term mental health care and residential care for older people, but so where the ways in which the nurses accounted for these ideals. Washing reluctant patients, for example, was legitimized in a scientific style (‘Our approach measurably develops patient independence!’), or an ethical style (‘You should take care of people who cannot look after themselves!’). Both styles of accounting co-exist, but it is unclear how they might relate.

At the time of this study, Pols worked with the Trimbos-institute in Utrecht. Since 2006, Pols works with the staff of the section of Medical ethics, Department of General Practice in the Amsterdam Medical Centre. Here, she studied the development of telecare in the Netherlands by ethnographically studying how patients use telecare technologies at home, and nurses in the hospital. She shows how both people and devices attempt to ‘tame’ one another, but also ‘unleash’ new possibilities.

Recently, she is working on a book with the working title: ‘On the empirical study of values. Aesthetic values in daily life and care’.

Jeannette Pols (2012) Care at a Distance. On the Closeness of
Technology, a book published by Amsterdam University Press

Politicians promote telecare as an efficient and affordable solution in
providing medical care for an ageing population. Telecare, they promise us, will
support older people with chronic disease to ‘manage’ themselves better and
thereby reduce the amount of health professionals needed. Nevertheless,
technology-pessimists assert that telecare will transform human care into a
distant and cold affair. They predict that older people will die while under the
continuous surveillance of sensors and cameras, but remote from any real human
contact.

This widely researched study presents some of the detailed ethnographic
analyses of the pioneering care practices in which patients and nurses use
telecare devices. It analyses these practices with the help of theoretical
insights drawn from various fields, such as anthropology, science- &
technology studies and empirical ethics.

The author concludes that neither a caring utopia of self managing patients
nor an uncaring high-tech health care system bears any resemblance to actual
care practices employing telecare. In the observed practices, telecare leads to
more intense caring relations, resulting from a spectacular raise in
the frequency of contacts between nurses and patients. Patients are much taken
by this, not because they feel they are finally able to manage themselves
better, but because they can ‘leave things to the experts’.The patients find
that caring is something that is best done for others.

The book frames urgent questions about the future of care and telecare, and
points to ways in which innovative care practices can be built on actual and
everyday concerns, rather than on hopes, hypes or nightmares.

2016

Pols, J., & Limburg, S. (2016). A matter of taste? Quality of life in day-to-day living with ALS and a feeding tube. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 40(3), 361-382. DOI: 10.1007/s11013-015-9479-y[details]

Aceros, J. C., Pols, J., & Domènech, M. (2015). Where is grandma? Home telecare, good aging and the domestication of later life. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 93, 102-111. DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2014.01.016[details]

Pols, A. J. (invited speaker) (9-11-2015). A matter of taste? Quality of life in day-to-day living with ALS and a feeding tube., Centre for Medical Science & Technology Studies, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Copenhagen.

Pols, A. J. (invited speaker) (18-10-2015). What Is a Good Life? Can Science and Medicine Tell Us?, Festival of Ideas, London.

Pols, A. J. (invited speaker) (20-2-2014). Good innovations. Ethics and the case of Alzheimer diagnostics., Expert workshop ‘Responsible innovation in a multiple world – the case of early diagnostics for Alzheimer’s disease, Enschede, University of Twente.

Pols, A. J. (invited speaker) (21-3-2013). ICT as the solution for an aging society? What technologies can and cannot do., Colloqium Philosphy of Technology, Enschede, dept. of Philosphy, University of Twente.

Pols, A. J. (invited speaker) (20-6-2012). Invited lecture: ICT as a solution for an aging society? What technologies can or cannot do. Conference ’Distributed health care solutions: possibilities and limitations.’, Diakonhjemmet University College, Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo, Department of health care at the University College of Narvik, Narvik.

Pols, A. J. (other) (2016 - 2020). International advisor PhD projectThe realisation of the right to care of senior citizens in situations of welfare dependency: a qualitative study., University of Gent (other).

Pols, A. J. (other) (2011 - 2014). International advisor for Norwegian Research Project ‘Distributed health care solutions: possibilities and limitations.’, Diakonhjemmet University College, University of Oslo, University College of Narvik. (other).

Pols, A. J. (other) (2011). PhD committee, University of Arhus. Candidate: Stinne Aalökke Ballegaard, PhD thesis: Health care technology in the home. Of home patients, family caregivers, and a vase of flowers.’ (other).

Pols, A. J. (organiser) (2007). Utrecht, Amsterdam medical Centre in cooperation with Lancaster University.. European conference on telecare: Telecare: Dialogue and Debate - the emergence of new technologies and responsibilities for healthcare at home in (…) (organising a conference, workshop, ...).